


We Might See You Yet

by starsandgraces



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither Jim nor Winona wanted things to be this way. But neither knows how to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Might See You Yet

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly angsty gen fic inspired by the song 'Birthday' by Kat Flint. Beta'd by [withthepilot](http://withthepilot.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Birthday - Kat Flint ([lyrics](http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858740847/) | [listen/download](http://www.box.net/shared/sdd4yj7nz5))

_We will write you down  
We will build you in words_

 

Jim, when asked to describe his family in school, doesn't draw pictures like all the other children. He writes.

He'll barely write a sentence about his stepfather and his brother, but he can fill pages with his mother. He gets frustrated when he can't think of the words he wants or if he spells them wrong. "It needs to be perfect," he says earnestly, but still frowning. No one can ever think of anything to argue with that, so they help him and move on to one of the other children, one of the ones who isn't quite so strange or difficult.

Jim himself isn't really sure why he needs to do this. Maybe it's because his mother rarely sends visual messages from wherever she is in space; instead, she writes to them. Maybe Jim's mother is an abstract figure, made of words and not much else. He feels like he has two mothers: the one who writes them long messages full of laughter and adventure that tell them how much she loves them, and the distant, distracted one who is only at home for a few months out of the year but never seems like she's really there.

It's not the truth, what he writes. He writes the loving mother from the messages, but one who is loving when she's at home as well, a mother who waits at the door for him to come home from school in the afternoons and pins his work on the door of the fridge. A mother who tucks him into bed at night, who strokes his hair and holds him close when he has a nightmare.

Really, Jim doesn't know what he'd do if he had a mother like that. Some things are only ever meant to be pretend.

 

 _We're not drunk but we'll see double on your birthday_

 

Winona never wanted to be the absent mother she's somehow become without even realising. Initially, she'd intended to never go back into space again, to resign her commission and stay on Earth with her boys. But when Jim's first birthday—the first anniversary of the _Kelvin_ disaster, the first anniversary of the day her entire world cracked and fell apart beneath her—rolled around, she suddenly couldn't stomach sitting there any more, in the house that had held such promise when they bought it together.

Starfleet are happy to have her back, of course, and offer her virtually any posting she could wish for to make sure she stays with them this time. Winona knows it's mainly because it's good publicity for them, but she's still grateful for it.

Later on, she thinks she's made the right decision. She tries to be home for Jim's birthdays to begin with, but with each successive one he looks more and more like his father. How can she face George's miniature on that day of all days? So she doesn't look at him, tries not to see the disappointment and betrayal written across that small, solemn face.

"Blow the candles out, Jimmy, for luck," Winona tells him on the last birthday she spends with her younger son. She tries not to think about what he might be wishing for.

 

 _Now you're home  
We will love you twice as much_

 

Sam told him that before Jim was born, Mom was always there. Jim's not sure how true that can be. He knows where and how he was born; if Mom was always at home, how can he have been born in space? But Sam says it so often that Jim starts to believe it.

Every time his mother comes home, he follows her around. He knows he shouldn't, he knows it annoys her (he sees that momentary flash of anger in her eyes sometimes when she turns around and sees he's there again, right behind her), but he can't stop himself. She's going to _leave_ again unless, maybe, he shows her how much he loves her. Jim can love her more, he can love her better, he can love her enough to make her want to stay if she'll only give him the chance.

For years, he does everything with her in mind. He brings home pretty rocks or feathers that he's found in the playground or walking home from school with Sam that he thinks she might like. He keeps them in a spare pillowcase under his bed until he somehow forgets to put it away one day, and Frank stubs his toe on it. Frank tosses the whole thing out, in spite of Jim's protestations.

He stops trying to find things his mother might like, then. He stops a lot of things. He still wants her love and approval, but he's all out of ideas for how to get them. The best he can hope for now is her attention, either good or bad, so he starts acting out, and he discovers that it's a lot more interesting than anything he did before. The messages she sends home are less loving now, but they _are_ more frequent, and that's all the encouragement Jim needs to keep this up.

It doesn't occur to Jim, of course, in his innocent selfishness, that she's still aching from the loss of his father. All he knows is that when his mother hugs him goodbye—it's always goodbye—it's brief and sterile and the smile she gives him never quite reaches her eyes.

Jim looks at the sky some nights and wonders what's so great about space, anyway, that it could take both parents away from him.

 

 _What can I say when I was so far away?  
Oh, we're strangers still_

 

She realises she doesn't know her younger son at all when word reaches her that he's driven the car into a quarry. A _quarry_ , of all things. Trust Jim to find the one high edge in Iowa. She can't get leave; Frank is the boys' legal guardian and while he's there, Starfleet doesn't see why Winona has to be there too.

When her tour is over and she comes back home, Jim's cuts and scrapes are mostly healed. He still has some faint bruising where he smacked into the ground, and she wouldn't be surprised if his fingernails never looked the same again, but none of that seems to be bothering him. Winona isn't sure when it started happening, but she notices that Jim isn't following her around any more. He's actively avoiding her.

She finally corners him about ten days after arriving home. "Why did you do it, Jimmy?" she asks, trying to sound like she isn't furious with him. She's not really sure if she has a right to be anything with him at the moment.

Jim squirms and won't meet Winona's eye, obviously trying to find an excuse to get away from this awkward conversation he doesn't want to be having with her. She's not sure what to do, and so she gets right into his eye line so he has no choice but to look at her. And he does, sort of. Blankly, like he doesn't recognise her. She swallows hard, trying to hold back her frustration.

"Jimmy—"

"My name's _Jim_ ," he interrupts fiercely, showing the most emotion he has since her return. And, hatefully, reminding her so strongly of George that she can almost hear his voice in her mind.

" _Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him Jim._ "

She swallows again, feeling tears prickling behind her eyes. "Jim it is." Then she takes a deep breath to compose herself, blinking a few times. "Jim, you can't do things like this. You just—it's stupid. It's more than stupid, it's dangerous. You could have been killed!" Winona's voice breaks a little when she says that, because she can't bear the thought of losing someone else she loves, especially not to something as stupid as what Jim did.

"Whatever," Jim says. He scuffs the toe of his boot along the ground and stares at the mark he's made there, and that's when it occurs to her that he doesn't care to try any more. He looks at her like she's a stranger because she _is_ a stranger. And the worst part is, she's the one who made herself that way.

Winona presses her lips into a thin line, trying to push down the rush of emotions that flood her at the realisation. She's suddenly afraid she's going to throw up, so she murmurs some platitudes that she knows he isn't paying attention to anyway and hurries away from him. Jim is looking at the dirt so studiously that he doesn't notice her reaction.

 

 _And our time will be your time as well_

Your time will come  
Your time will come

 

When she hears the news that her son— _the fuck-up son_ , she thinks wryly and not a little sadly—saved the entire planet and is a Federation hero, Winona Kirk smiles to herself very slightly. She goes to see him receiving his commendation and promotion, but she doesn't wait to talk to him. Things are still too strained between them, and she knows it's her own fault. _His father would have been proud to know him_ , she thinks, watching him shake hands with Admiral Pike. _He always was George's son, not mine._

She will try to fix things, one day. But today is Jim's day, and she doesn't want to taint it with their past. Winona has never been good at leaving the past where it belongs. And that, she supposes, is what got them into this mess to begin with.

But one day, she would really like to meet the man her son has become.

 

 _And oh, you know we really should have met  
Hold a mirror to the world and maybe we might see you yet_


End file.
